


When Your Number Isn't Up

by junkster



Category: Game Over Man! (2018)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Best Friends, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 19:43:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19875046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junkster/pseuds/junkster
Summary: After a doozy of a day, Darren starts to shut down, withdraw. Joel won't let him go.





	When Your Number Isn't Up

“Can we get out of here, man?” Darren rubs a hand across his brow and looks around at the shitheap that is Alexxx’s bedroom. “I’m tired, I’m covered in blood, and I really, really need to get drunk and/or high right now.” 

“God, you’re such an addict,” Alexxx says in wonderment, not even sparing him a glance as he throws porn mags into a suitcase. “Did I do that? Did I create that monster?”

“Yes,” Joel says definitively, tentatively picking up a mug with a layer of mold in the bottom before putting it back down. “You and that fucking salvia.”

“You should try it, Baby Dunk,” Alexxx says frankly, “if anyone needs chilling out it’s you, dude.”

“It chills him out for like, ten minutes, Alexxx!” Joel shoots back, pushing his glasses back up his nose frustratedly. “You just conveniently forget about the fact it makes him puke sometimes, and he won’t eat for a day straight, and don’t even get me started on the fucking nightmares.”

Darren shoots him a warning look and Joel shuts his mouth, swallowing as Alexxx stares at him in outrage.

"You’re blaming all that on the salvia? Fuck you, dude! D’you ever consider he’s bulimic, maybe?”

Darren’s expression of disbelief turns on Alexxx instead. “I do not have bulimia, Alexxx, don’t even joke about that! I can’t believe we’re fucking discussing this right now after this shitstorm of a day! Can we just go, already? Joel, you said yourself this room’s just full of junk.”

“It’s _my_ junk, Darren,” Alexxx says, tossing a bunch of the hotel’s white towels into his case. “The junk in my trunk. I told you, if we go now there’ll be nothing left by tomorrow! You know how many people want a piece of me right now, dude? This ‘junk’ is worth a fortune on ebay!”

Joel sends Darren a sympathetic look as he pulls one of Alexxx’s paintings down off the wall, a magnificent self-portrait of the man himself smoking a giant spliff, surrounded by wolves. “Five more minutes, man, then we’ll go. We don’t wanna get stopped by the reporters down on the street.”

“We don’t? That sounds _awesome_!”

“No, Alexxx,” Darren says wearily, putting his head in his hands. “It doesn’t. God, I’m so tired.”

“Fine, you guys can go and I’ll get all the glory. The camera fucking _loves_ me!”

“Where’re you gonna go, man?” Joel asks, looking around at the chaos. “You can’t live here anymore.”

“I got an invite from Cassie, actually,” Alexxx says with a grin, waggling his eyebrows at them. “Guess women really do love a hero.” 

Joel shakes his head. “You sly dog,” he says, at the same time that Darren mumbles “that poor, poor woman” into his hands.

Alexxx turns around to retort when something dawns on him, his mouth hanging open for a moment as the gears visibly turn behind his eyes. 

“You alright?” Joel asks, watching him cautiously. They’re all fully expecting one of them to drop with a concussion at any second. 

“Fuuuuck, it’s you, isn’t it?” Alexxx exclaims, staring at Darren with clarity in his eyes. “ _You’re_ the guy!”

Darren shares a startled look with Joel and quickly says: “What? What guy?”

“The guy Joel fucked!”

Darren stares at him, speechless, unable to do anything but watch Joel’s frantically flapping hands in his peripheral vision.

“That’s awesome, man,” Alexxx carries on happily, turning back to his packing and clearly not noticing or caring about the deer in the headlights look on both of their faces. “I always hoped he’d have someone who’d be good to him for his first time, y’know?”

"You did?” Joel asks in surprise.

“Of course! You’re a sensitive dude, Baby Dunk.”

“That’s true,” Joel admits.

“And okay, Darren, you have it in you to be a gigantic douchebag sometimes when you’re trying to order me around, but you’re a good guy and you’re one of my two best friends in the world, so I’m really glad that it was you, if it wasn’t me. Which it wasn’t.”

“Um...thanks?” Darren says warily.

“He actually wasn’t my _first_ ,” Joel mumbles as he goes back to stacking Alexxx’s paintings.

Alexxx ignores him. “So you’re gonna tell me the gory details, right, like best friends do?” he continues, grinning as he sweeps his collection of lotion into a suitcase with one arm. “I mean, Baby Dunk, you’re clearly the bottom, am I right? Oh no, wait!” He turns with wide eyes and points at Darren. “You! You’re such a power bottom, dude! Oh, it’s all making sense, now!”

Darren stares at him open-mouthed for a moment before shooting back, “We are _not_ discussing this, Alexxx!”

“Uh, yeah, we totally are, dude, we’re doing it right now. Oh, wait, do you do it in rooms we’ve just cleaned? I bet you guys have spunked in every room in this hotel, am I right? Eww! I know that’s what I’d do, if I was gay, which I’m not.” Met only by stony silence, Alexxx rolls his eyes and asks instead: “So are you gay as well, dude?" 

"I'm bi," Darren tells him, pinching the bridge of his nose tiredly. 

"Okay, so tell me this - how long’ve you guys been doing it?” 

“A year, maybe?” Darren says warily. “A little longer.”

Joel looks at Darren, then back down at his cardboard box with a small smile. “I mean...I thought he was hot from the first day we met, actually.” 

“The first time we met, he was on his knees scrubbing toilets,” Alexxx points out frankly. 

“Yeah,” Joel says dreamily.

“You thought I was hot too, right?” 

“Uh...sure. I mean, I could tell straight away that you were totally hetero, though, dude.” 

“Of course you could.” 

“And I wasn’t?” 

Joel looks up at Darren with a shrug. “I had no idea about you, man, I just hoped. You’d been here a few months already and you were older than us, and a fucking mystery. You still are.” 

“He’s right about that, of the three of us you are definitely the weird one, Darren. Did you know he once went to jail?”

“It was three days, Alexxx.” 

“Three days of showering with fifteen other dudes!”

“You went to jail?” Joel asks Darren quietly, pushing his glasses back up his nose as they slip. “What happened?”

“I was eighteen, I got in a fight,” Darren explains, sitting down tiredly on the edge of the bed. “I was…”

“High?” Joel offers softly. 

Darren holds his gaze for a long moment before looking down at his feet with a small nod. 

Alexxx glances between them, considering, before kneeling down on his suitcase, squashing it while he pulls at the zip. “You guys’ve got that telepathic thing down, huh? That how you knew he was lusting after you, Darren?” 

“I didn’t know for months, man. I was spending most of my time trying to keep you two from getting fired.”

"Because you loved us so much!”

“Because you were the first friends I’d made in this shithole,” Darren confirms. “And you kept breaking things, coming on to guests and stealing everything you could lay your hands on.”

“Yeah, you really love us, dude.” 

“If you really wanna know,” Joel speaks up, directing Alexxx’s attention away from Darren, “we hooked up at the first New Year’s party we worked. I guess I’d already come out to you guys in a drunken stupor by that point, but I didn’t know that and I was fucking terrified of screwing things up. But there we were, changing bed sheets and drinking someone’s old champagne as the clock struck, and we just - “

“- Wait!” Alexxx holds up a hand. “Where was I? Was I there? I think I’d remember something like that, dude!”

“You told us you were going down to the kitchen to steal some food and booze, but you basically disappeared for three hours and we still don’t know where you went to this day.” 

Alexxx looks at him blankly. “I’m guessing I got embroiled in an orgy or something, man, that seems like the only logical explanation…”

“You came back smelling like lavender,” Darren offers. “Old woman orgy?” 

Alexxx narrows his eyes at that for a second before shrugging. “I’m alluring to ladies of all ages, man, what can I say? Aside from that, why were you smelling me? Creepy, dude.”

“So we felt a little left out,” Joel begins again, crawling across the carpet to help Alexxx with the suitcase. “And we were drunk. And we were laughing about how fucking abysmal our lives were and then just as we did these fucking beautiful synchronised hospital corners on the sheets I heard the chimes and I looked up and I just leaned across and I kissed him.”

“And I kissed him back,” Darren says simply. 

“I thought you were gonna sock me in the face,” Joel admits. “I was panicking so hard.”

Darren shakes his head. “I’m not an animal, Joel.”

“Well, you can be,” Joel says with a leer. Darren smirks back at him.

“Again, ew,” Alexxx says bluntly.

“I thought it was just, y’know,” Darren waves a hand, “a New Year’s thing, to begin with. I thought it was kinda weird, but how fucking long had it been since someone made out with me? It was when you pulled back and I saw your face that I knew it wasn’t just a ‘happy holidays’ kiss.” 

“I wanted you on that bed, man,” Joel says, expression serious as he adds quietly: “I wanted to get down on my _knees_.” 

“Whoa, that’s enough detail for me, thank you, though!” Alexxx says brightly, getting to his feet and looking between them before asking in a stupor: “Wait, you guys _blow_ each other?”

“Amongst other things.” Darren eyes him with amusement. “I thought you _wanted_ all the gory details?”

“I think I just want to know who bangs who, really, when it comes down to it.” 

“Gay sex isn’t all about topping and bottoming, Alexxx,” Joel points out. “There’s so much more to it.” 

“There is?” 

“If you must know, we both do, well, _both_. Whatever feels right in the moment, I guess.” 

“Really! That’s a surprise to me. Good for you guys, equality’s important. I just have one more question,” Alexxx says, putting a hand on his hip and a foot up on his suitcase. “Can I watch one time?” 

________________________________________

There’s no way to soften the glare in the Darren’s bathroom, the bare bulb bright and harsh after the dimness of his bedroom as he pulls the cord. It’s small in there, barely room to turn around between the toilet, sink and shower. He sits down in exhaustion on the side of the bathtub, leaving Joel to stand in the doorway and blink and stare, retinas burning at the sudden brightness.

“Jesus, Darren,” he says with hushed astonishment, eyes fixed on the huge bruise that spreads from Darren’s solar plexus right under his rib cage and down towards his hip. “Fuck, that looks bad…”

Darren looks down at himself with a weird, detached disinterest, reaching up to trace the edge of the bruise with his finger. Joel still flinches when he thinks of some of the hits they’d taken that night, particularly the stone whipping across their backs. He remembers the impact of it coming down, the way it knocked the breath out of his lungs and the way the sudden agony paralysed him. He can still hear Darren’s cry of pain, and the heart-sinking helplessness of not being able to help, or see, or touch. Joel had pissed blood earlier, staring down at the pink-tinged water in bewilderment before flushing it and keeping quiet, kidneys aching. Going to the hospital was out of the question - he doesn’t have health insurance. None of them do. 

Joel’s skin prickles with tension as he watches Darren, still and quiet, terrifying in his withdrawal from the world. He’d fallen silent in the taxi on their way home, head on Joel’s shoulder, eyes closed, blood-stained hands lying weak on his thighs.

“Darren,” Joel calls softly, taking another step into the room. 

Darren’s reaction to his voice is slow, like an old, flickering fluorescent light that pings on and off in a dim corridor, broken and struggling to make it. When he finally shifts his gaze to Joel, it’s dark and emotionless.

“Don’t do this to me, man,” Joel pleads, fingers tightening over the edge of the sink. “Don’t skip out on me…”

“I’m not - “ Darren stops, closes his eyes, coughs. His voice sounds like he hasn’t spoken to another human being in days; a mixture of salvia smoke and blood and fear. He tries again, his eyes still closed, words gravel-rough. “I’m here, Joel.”

“I _need_ you,” Joel says, his own voice as soft as a breath in comparison. “I can’t get through this without you.”

Darren looks at him then - really looks at him. His eyes are so intense under those bathroom spotlights, green and blue and stormy grey, and the blood that’s run down the side of his face is shockingly dark against his pale skin. His gaze moves from Joel’s face to catalogue every bruise and cut on his body, sorrow slowly taking over his expression. He stands up slowly, reaching out to steady himself on the sink. 

“You’re tougher than you think you are, Baby Dunk,” he says, close enough now for Joel to see the shadows in his pale eyes and the swell of his heart under his ribcage. “Let me look you over, man. You got hurt pretty badly.”

“I’m fine,” Joel says, shaking his head as he fixes on the cut above Darren’s brow, the split in the skin there making his stomach turn. “I’m fine, Darren, I’m just...I’m scared, man. I was so scared you’d die,” he whispers, voice cracking at the wash of emotion that hits him square in the chest for the hundredth time that day, like just another boot to the chest.

Darren gazes at him, eyes soft with understanding, reaching out to take Joel’s trembling hands between both of his own.

“I smell blood everywhere,” Joel tells him desperately. “I hear the sound of skulls cracking open and bullets tearing through flesh. When I close my eyes I see dead bodies _everywhere_.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“I’d never even _seen_ a dead body before today, man.”

Darren doesn’t answer that one, letting go of Joel’s hands to cup his face gently, fingers brushing his long curls back behind his left ear and away from the bruise that throbs on his cheekbone. 

Joel gazes right back at him sadly, reaching up to curl a hand tightly around one of Darren’s wrists. He smells the mint of salvia and smoke and fear-sweat and, worst of all, blood. They are so fucked.

“You think Mark Cuban will really buy our story?” he asks tiredly, already figuring the answer. “I don’t wanna be a housekeeper for the rest of my life, Darren, especially not one on the verge of a mental breakdown.”

Darren’s crooked, rueful smile just about breaks his heart, and says it all.

Joel closes his eyes. Exhales a long, resigned breath as his head drops forward.

Darren keeps up that slow, soft stroke of fingers around the curve of his ear and they just breathe together in the silence for a long moment, feeling pain and numbness at once. 

Darren’s the one to speak up finally, softly. “Let’s get clean, man.”

“Let me do one thing first,” Joel mumbles, reaching out blindly until he finds the light cord and pulling it, plunging them back into comforting, blissful darkness, just the glow of city lights through the frosted window.   


______________________________________________

They turn the water red, sticky blood running from Joel’s split knuckles, Darren’s face, Joel’s hair, Darren’s arms. They find glass in their hair and blood under their fingernails, both trying to hide the pain as soap stings and hot water bites.

Darren’s apartment isn’t much of a step up from Alexxx’s temporary home, and the water starts to go cold after only a few minutes, chasing them out before they can even begin to relax. 

“Sorry, man,” Darren says as he reaches for the towel, swiping his hair back out of his eyes and turning back to hand it to Joel. 

“Thanks,” Joel says, smiling at him as he stands there, dripping and gorgeous, unselfconscious in his skin. Darren smiles back and watches him dry off, catching the towel when he’s finished and giving himself a cursory rub down before chucking it into the tub. 

“You look better,” Joel tells him, moving to lean back against the sink. “You look a little less like you’ve been through hell and back.”

Darren stands in front of him, eyes drifting from Joel to his own reflection in the mirror, then quickly back again. “I killed a guy, today,” he says quietly.

“I know,” Joel says gently. “So did I.”

“We had no choice, right?”

Joel shakes his head, shivering as he starts to feel the air cool his warm skin. “They would’ve killed all three of us. I’d’ve killed twenty of them if I’d had to.”

Darren regards him thoughtfully for a long moment, taking the couple of steps forward it takes to bring them toe-to-toe. His hands reach out to take hold of Joel’s slight hips, his thumbs running slowly back and forth over the sensitive nerves there, another full-body shiver travelling down Joel’s spine as his breath catches in his chest. Darren is silhouetted by the dim light coming in through the window behind him, just the glint of his eyes as he gazes at Joel, unblinking and intense. One of those hands slides up over Joel’s navel to his breastbone, palm flat over his fast-beating heart. He’s lost in Darren’s world-weary, heavy, hungry stare; the intimacy of their quiet breaths in the silence of that dark room, the sink so cold against the small of his back, his hair cool and wet against his neck, a slow droplet of water trailing down over his chest. Darren leans in and down and stops it in his tracks, tongue licking a hot stripe up over Joel’s nipple before moving to the soft, vulnerable notch between his collar bones and then up the side of his throat to his jaw, his mouth, his tongue. Joel kisses him desperately, reaching out to wrap his fingers around Darren’s sides as Darren’s hands find his face, holding him so fucking tenderly he could cry. 

When Darren pulls back enough to just brush their lips together, they stand close and share breaths as they feel each other’s presence, feel each other breathing, feel each other  _ living _ .

“Joel,” Darren says, feather-soft, words a murmur against Joel’s mouth, one of his big hands cupping Joel’s jaw so gently. “I love you, Joel.”

“Fuck,” Joel exhales harshly, desperately. “Darren…” His heart is a knot in his chest and he can’t breathe for a long moment, tears burning behind closed eyes.

Darren lifts his head and Joel slides his hands up over his shoulders to his face, stroking across stubble and feeling it catch on the pads of his thumbs. He gazes up into the eyes he’s come to adore, full of fire and ice and determination and now...

“I love you too,” he says fiercely, his heart pounding against his ribs, painful in its intensity. “So much, god,  _ so much _ . I wouldn’t have made it through today without you, man. Wouldn’t have made it through the last few  _ years  _ without you.” The room has gone, his peripheral vision shutting down until he’s seeing stormy blue eyes and Darren’s gentle expression and nothing else. “I never even had a best friend before I met you and Alexxx, and now I can’t imagine my life without you.” 

“You don’t have to,” Darren promises, leaning into Joel’s touch as his eyes close, a show of trust and vulnerability that makes the lump in Joel’s throat even harder to deal with.

He swallows hard and then kisses Darren again, savouring the feeling of having the rest of the world blocked out by Darren’s body, tall and strong, protective and familiar. His heart kicks up a gear when one of Darren’s hands slides down over his side, over his hip, fingers curling under his thigh and prompting him to lift it, his foot hooking behind Darren’s calf as Darren’s hips press against his own, rocking against him with just enough intent to make him gasp.

“Fuck, it’s been too long, man,” he grinds out, pressing his forehead to Darren’s shoulder and pushing his hips forward, his hands locked behind Darren’s neck.

When Darren answers, his voice is right up close to Joel’s ear, a rumble of breath against his skin. “It’s been a  _ week _ ,” he says, and for the first time that night there’s a hint of amusement there.

“A  _ while _ ,” Joel confirms, breath catching as Darren slides a hand down between their bellies and wraps long fingers around both of them. “Too long, far too long. There were times today I thought we were gonna die, and all I could think about was fucking...”

Darren smiles; Joel can feel it against his jaw. “I hear that’s kinda normal in life or death situations, man.”

“I didn’t wanna die without getting to feel every fucking inch of you one last time.”

“Forever a romantic, Baby Joel.”

"You’re very distracting, you know that?”

Darren presses their foreheads together, twisting his wrist and making Joel gasp and swear again.

“You were  _ my _ first, y’know.”

Joel pulls back to look at him, dazed wonder in his expression. 

“First guy,” Darren says with a crook of a smile.

Joel gazes at him, reaching out to bury a hand in his hair, dark curls damp against his fingers, stroking gently as he digests what he’s heard; the most vulnerable Darren has ever been with him, wet and naked and hard, scared and broken and honest. 

“We’re gonna be okay, D,” he says softly, feeling the butterfly flutter of Darren’s jugular against the inside of his arm, quick and heavy. 

“Yeah?” Darren says, his other hand sliding around behind Joel to press into the small of his back, relieving him from the hard cold of the sink. 

“Yeah.”

“You wanna come to bed?”

“Yeah,” Joel agrees, his hands on either side of Darren’s throat as they lean in for another slow, yearning kiss. “Yeah.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I stole the thing about Darren going to jail for three days from Anders' real life, he talked about it in the Riffin' with Griffin podcast. Long live the dude husbands.


End file.
